Marketing Sherpa released a Search Marketing report today. It contains some interesting information about search marketing but – also, a lot of information about internal search (aka site search).
Some points worth noting:
- Analyzing internal site search terms was one of the most popular keyword research techniques identified for search marketing.
- One survey greatly emphasised the importance of site search – over 50% of people who have decided what they are going to do when they visit a retailer site have decided to use the site search. We’ve seen this data before – about 50% of people are search focused – but it’s great to have it reinforced. This is why over 95% of retail sites now have search boxes.
- Even though it is universally recognized that site search is extremely important and that people who use site search are more likely to buy, over half the retailers rated their site search as being poor! What’s more retailers rated their site search higher than non-retailers – so the non retail sites have even worse site search.
This highlights the opportunity that site search vendors like SLI have – to help these sites improve their search.
The section on site search finishes with a summary of a case study and quotes our customer Shirely Tan, from American Bridal.
I recommend reading the report.
